Two Shores, One Climate Crisis: Why Spain and Morocco Govern Migration and Adaptation in Silos

The Mediterranean Basin has become one of the clearest laboratories for observing what climate change actually does to human societies. Warming across the region is progressing faster than the global average, while precipitation continues to decline across much of the basin, a combination that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified as marking the Mediterranean as one of the world’s principal climate change hotspots. In Spain and Morocco, the two countries that face each other across the western entrance to the Mediterranean, repeated droughts, water scarcity, and extreme weather events are no longer abstract projections. They are visible pressures on agriculture, food security, employment, public health, infrastructure, and regional development, and they fall hardest on rural territories where livelihoods remain tied to climate-sensitive sectors such as farming, livestock production, and fisheries.

A new comparative study published in the journal Environmental Challenges examines how these two neighbouring countries govern the emerging relationship between environmental change and human mobility, and its central finding is striking: despite decades of accumulating climate pressure, both Spain and Morocco continue to manage climate adaptation and migration through entirely separate institutional pathways. The research, conducted by Abdeslam Badre, applies Adaptive Governance Theory to a policy field where it has rarely been used before, and it asks a deceptively simple question. When the climate changes and people move, who is actually coordinating the response? In both countries, the answer appears to be: almost nobody, at least not yet.

The scientific foundation of the study rests on an important consensus within migration scholarship. There is, so far, no evidence that environmental pressures trigger migration through direct and immediate mechanisms. Instead, climate change acts as what researchers call a risk multiplier, an amplifier of existing vulnerabilities rather than a producer of displacement. Declining agricultural productivity and repeated climate shocks reduce the viability of traditional rural livelihoods and increase socio-economic uncertainty, and it is under these conditions that mobility becomes more likely to emerge as one of several adaptive strategies available to households. Many families diversify economic activities, modify agricultural practices, rely on remittances, or strengthen local social networks long before they consider relocation. Migration, in this framing, is one element within a broader portfolio of adaptation responses, shaped by household negotiations, social networks, and expectations about future opportunities.

The study also highlights a phenomenon that has gained increasing attention in recent years: immobility. Environmental stress does not always create opportunities for movement, and in some cases it actively reduces a household’s capacity to migrate. Repeated crop failures can undermine the very financial resources required for relocation, producing situations in which vulnerable populations become trapped in deteriorating environments. This complexity is why the research deliberately avoids the deterministic language of climate migrants and instead uses the term climate-related mobility, referring to population movements that emerge through the interaction between environmental pressures and wider socio-economic conditions. Internal movement, seasonal migration, and circular forms of mobility that allow families to diversify income while maintaining ties to their places of origin are all far more common responses than permanent long-distance relocation.

Spain and Morocco experience strikingly similar environmental pressures but operate within profoundly different socio-economic and institutional contexts, which is precisely what makes the comparison analytically powerful. In Spain, environmental change intersects with demographic ageing, agricultural restructuring, and rural depopulation. In many inland and semi-arid regions, including Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia, declining agricultural profitability and shifting labour markets combine with reduced rainfall and competition over water resources to accelerate rural transformation. Adaptation strategies there include investments in water efficiency, economic diversification, and a generational shift away from agricultural livelihoods among younger people. Mobility in Spain is therefore part of wider processes of socio-territorial change rather than a direct response to climate hazards. In Morocco, by contrast, environmental pressures are linked more directly to livelihood security, because significant rural populations continue to depend on climate-sensitive agriculture, and recurrent droughts have affected production, rural incomes, and regional inequalities.

Both countries have, on paper, impressive policy architectures. Spain’s National Climate Change Adaptation Plan for 2021 to 2030 coordinates adaptation actions across water resources, agriculture, biodiversity, coastal areas, and public health, and it is complemented by the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan and a National Strategy on the Demographic Challenge. Its migration governance, reflecting the country’s transformation from an emigration nation into a major destination, combines border management, humanitarian assistance, and integration mechanisms, anchored by the Strategic Framework for Citizenship and Inclusion against Racism and Xenophobia and supported by European funding instruments such as the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. Morocco has developed a National Strategy for Sustainable Development, a National Climate Plan, integrated water management strategies, and major investments in renewable energy and agricultural resilience, including the Noor Solar Complex and the Green Morocco Plan. Its National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum, adopted in 2013, marked a significant shift toward migrant protection, integration, and regularisation.

Yet the study’s analysis, structured around four dimensions drawn from Adaptive Governance Theory, reveals persistent fragmentation in both cases. The theory, which emerged from research on complex social-ecological systems, holds that effective governance of uncertain, interconnected risks requires continuous learning, institutional flexibility, collaboration across administrative levels, and the integration of diverse knowledge sources. When the four dimensions are applied, the gaps become clear. Institutional coordination between climate and migration bodies is minimal in both countries. Policy integration is weak: climate strategies focus on reducing environmental vulnerability while migration policies address mobility management and integration, and neither domain systematically recognises the other’s concerns. Spain’s decentralised adaptation structure allows policies to reflect territorial differences but complicates coordination, while Morocco’s strong central mobilisation around environmental priorities does not automatically connect national strategies with the local knowledge and lived experience of drought-affected rural communities.

The governance consequences of this separation are tangible. Communities affected by environmental transformations may experience social and economic disruption long before these changes become recognised as mobility-related challenges within any policy framework. Learning processes remain concentrated within specific policy communities: Spain possesses a strong scientific assessment system but struggles to translate environmental knowledge into social and mobility policy, while Morocco’s adaptation efforts would benefit from stronger incorporation of how rural communities actually interpret and respond to changing agricultural conditions and water availability. Adaptive governance, the study argues, does not mean predicting migration flows through environmental indicators alone. It means understanding how environmental pressures interact with social conditions to shape the choices available to individuals and communities, and building institutions capable of adjusting as those conditions evolve.

From these findings, the study derives a set of concrete policy innovations. Climate policies should incorporate mobility as a possible social outcome of environmental change by systematically asking which territories face declining agricultural viability, how those pressures might influence urban demographic concentration, and what governance responses emerging forms of mobility would require. Institutional bridges, such as inter-ministerial coordination platforms, shared policy assessments, and joint strategic planning exercises, could connect environmental and migration actors who currently operate in isolation. At the bilateral level, the study proposes that Spain and Morocco establish a permanent platform dedicated to climate mobility and territorial resilience, supporting joint research, territorial assessments, emergency preparedness, and knowledge exchange. It further recommends integrated information systems that combine climate, demographic, socio-economic, and territorial data, so that declining rainfall patterns and rural demographic trends can be analysed together to identify territories requiring preventive intervention.

Perhaps the most resonant recommendation concerns participation. Environmental change is experienced through everyday realities, and the communities affected by it possess valuable knowledge about transformation and adaptation, from traditional drought-management practices to livelihood diversification and collective resource management. Including local actors in governance processes, the study argues, strengthens legitimacy and improves policy relevance, because adaptation is both a technical and a social process. The broader lesson extends well beyond the western Mediterranean: as climate vulnerability increasingly intersects with complex mobility dynamics in many regions, the Spain-Morocco comparison suggests that effective responses demand a transformation in policy thinking, in which environmental adaptation and migration management become interconnected components of a broader territorial governance approach. Environmental interdependence, the study concludes, makes Euro-Mediterranean cooperation not a choice but a necessity, and shared environmental futures will require shared responsibilities.

Subject of Research: Climate adaptation and migration governance in Spain and Morocco

Article Title: A comparative analysis of climate adaptation and migration governance in Spain and Morocco

Article References: A comparative analysis of climate adaptation and migration governance in Spain and Morocco. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: climate change, migration governance, Mediterranean, Spain, Morocco, adaptive governance, climate mobility, water scarcity, policy integration, drought, Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, rural livelihoods